How To Fix The 'Page Fault In Nonpaged Area' Error In Windows 10

This tutorial was written by Tom's Hardware Community member JamieKavanagh. You can find a list of all their tutorials here.

The Windows 10 error "Page Fault In Nonpaged Area" usually results in a BSOD and can be quite frustrating to troubleshoot. The error is caused by Windows not finding a file within memory that it expects to find. If you need to fix this error, well, this is how to do it.

The root cause can be software or hardware, often an aborted Windows update or driver conflict from the software side or faulty RAM on the hardware side. Let’s check software first.

Fix Windows 10 error Page Fault In Nonpaged Area

If your error is typical, it will result in random BSOD crashes but between crashes, the computer will be usable. Let us use those moments to troubleshoot. First check the hard drive for errors.

Open a CMD window as an administrator.

Type or paste ‘chkdsk /f /r’ and hit Enter.

Allow the process to complete.

Then perform a system file check.

Open a CMD window as an administrator.

Type or paste ‘sfc /scannow’ and hit Enter.

Allow the process to complete.

It might also be useful to check Windows updates and drivers as they are often the cause of Page Fault In Nonpaged Area errors.

Navigate to Settings, Update & security.

Click ‘Check for updates’ in the Windows update tab.

Allow the process to complete.

Navigate to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Device Manager.

Select hardware, right click and ‘Update Driver Software’. Make sure you check graphics and audio drivers as well as any third party webcam, printer and other drivers.

Reboot and retest.

If the BSOD still occurs, let us check the Windows page file.

Right click ‘This PC’ in Windows Explorer and select Properties.

Click ‘Advanced system settings’.

In the Advanced tab click Settings in the Performance box.

Click Change in the Virtual memory box and uncheck ‘Automatically manage paging files for all drives’.

Set a custom size for the page file.

Click Ok.

Reboot.

Finally, if none of those software methods work, it’s time to check your RAM. If your computer has multiple sticks of RAM, remove one and retest. If the fault persists, change the memory slot and retest. If the error keeps occurring, consider replacing your RAM.

You may also want to run a built in diagnostic from your PC's provider. Multiple times with this issue I've booted to the diagnostic, ran it and found that the hard drive failed. May save you some time, though it is unfortunate news. Happened especially during the DST diagnostic

The most likely cause of this problem for someone who visits THG is that they need to stop fiddling with their system and put their RAM at either bone stock settings or XMP. Also check what your system memory spec actually is.

For example, officially supported AMD Ryzen memory speeds are below. Intel IMCs may be a little more forgiving on speeds, but you also get the nightmare that's Meltdown.

1866 MHz for 4 DIMMs in dual channel and dual rank.2133 MHz for 4 DIMMs in dual channel and single rank.2400 MHz for 2 DIMMs in dual channel and dual rank.2666 MHz for 2 DIMMs in dual channel and single rank.

If the disk is prefail, chkdsk is dangerous for mechanical drives, as it will make many operations on the disk and issues with mechanical disks are sometimes a physical inconsistency somewhere in the magnetic platter that is the disk storage. In my experience these kinds of problems can go from a few bad sectors to a completely failed disk rapidly. I always would recommend checking the SMART status of the disk before running chkdsk /f.

Of note if you do have a disk in pre fail or failing to the point it won't boot - gddrescue, aka ddrescue in some distributions is designed to do full disk copies of disks, even if some of the disk is bad. I have recovered numerous systems that wouldn't boot, even with full disk encryption by cloning the failing drive to a new one of the same size or larger. I recommend running chkdsk /f twice after the copying of a Windows system this way.

As a rule of thumb - Always rule out hardware first. Use software to check the smart status of the primary hard drive, as it's the most common component to fail. Crystal disk info is free for Windows, or my preference is to boot a live installation of Linux from a USB disk or DVD and use the disk information tool built in to pretty much any Debian based distribution. Linux mint will feel very familiar to any Windows use.

If the disk is bad or pre fail (bad sectors, failed reallocation), replace it. If not, test the memory next. Memtest 86 is a common tool to use, though you need to let it run for at least several hours, to up to a full day. Overnight is usually sufficient. Many motherboard and pc manufacturers bake some kind of memory test into the firmware, which you can access by pressing the correct key when you first power on the PC. It's usually an F-key, F1-F12, and may be listed at startup "press F12 to enter setup, press del for tools" etc. Sometimes these include disk utilities as well as other hardware diagnostics.

If hard drive and memory test out, I prefer to rule out a software issue in Windows by testing another OS for stability. If it doesn't ever crash in a Linux distribution or clean install of Windows, you're looking at a software issue, most likely a driver. If it crashes despite being a separate installation, you may want to consider replacing your computer, as the issue is either the processor or the system board. If it's in warranty from the manufacturer, get them to replace it, just pull your hard drive or make a copy with software like acronis for Windows or DD in Linux, or at least backup your important files to an external disk or cloud storage.

If you built your own system you probably didn't need this guide, but if you're reading this check out the warranty on your individual components. 5-10 years is common, and parts like memory often have lifetime warranties.

As a desktop support specialist I just saw this error last week after building a fresh install on a PC with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (build 1709). It was a brand new out of the box laptop with all the latest drivers and firmware. The issue ended up being the antivirus software that our company uses. There was a patch that had been released and it fixed it right away. Don't forget to check things like that too!

If you have to add /r to your chkdsk command, you shouldn't be doing a chkdsk and should be replacing your drive. Telling people to do a /r gives them the false impression that it has been "fixed" when bad sectors still exist and often spread until the drive is inaccessible. You'd only add the /r if you desperately needed to boot the PC up for something and was willing to risk data loss, otherwise get the drive replaced.